How to Make Money Doing Toy Reviews on Youtube

Jason Robert Keef clutches a baby doll, contorting his face up into a series of expressions: daze, and then excitement and finally bemusement.

He pauses for a 2nd before smiling widely into the camera perched on a tripod.

"What's up everybody? Jason here!" he chirps. "A lot of you lot have been begging me and begging me and begging me to review a Infant Live doll. She's cute, and apparently you feed her and she poops!"

With dreams of becoming a Hollywood actor dashed, Keef has instead transformed himself into a YouTube persona who specializes in unboxing and reviewing toys.

Jason Robert Keef specializes in unboxing and reviewing toys on YouTube.

(Patrick T. Fallon / For The Times)

The holidays are his busiest flavor. For upward to 12 hours a solar day, the 33-twelvemonth-old sits at the wooden kitchen table in his West Hollywood flat, filming and editing clips of himself unpacking toys while he gives a running commentary. His near popular video, a shopping trip to the American Daughter store at the Grove in Los Angeles, has garnered more than fourscore,000 views.

"And that's a drop in the bucket compared to some," he said.

That's because toy unboxing has become a large business concern on YouTube. The odd — and hugely popular — phenomenon attracts millions of eyeballs. Some unboxers accept become Internet stars, earning millions of dollars a twelvemonth in advertizing acquirement and commanding hefty fees for appearances.

In 2015, people in the U.S. watched sixty million hours of unboxing videos for everything from gadgets to makeup, attracting more than than 1.ane billion views, according to YouTube. Americans spent nearly twice as much time watching toy-related videos this yr compared with 2014.

In August, Disney co-opted the powerful new marketing tool to unveil merchandise tied to its latest "Star Wars" movie. YouTube stars around the world unboxed "Star Wars" playthings in an 18-hour marathon called Force Friday that was streamed online.

YouTube has become the next frontier for toy companies to chief, experts said, as kids become harder to reach through traditional media like boob tube.

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"This is but sort of the evolution of TV commercials," said Jason Moser, a toy analyst at the Motley Fool. "It's on need wherever they desire to spotter it, on whatever device they want to watch it. And to boot, it's more measurable than information technology e'er was on TV."

Dave Brandon, main executive of Toys R Us, said the concatenation has made its own toy videos that take garnered ii meg views on YouTube.

"It'south such a wonderful manner of conveying information, and, oh, by the way, it doesn't price you anything," he said.

YouTube videos aren't free, but they're far cheaper than TV ads, analysts said. Toy companies nevertheless take to shoulder the cost of making their own videos or, at a minimum, they have to transport free toys to YouTube stars to review.

Rashay Brown, a nurse from Hollywood, says her 9-year-old niece and 5-yr-erstwhile nephew watch unboxing videos "literally every mean solar day."

"The male child especially, he'll watch the same video over and over and over once again," said Brown, 25. "He always gets surprised as well, merely it'southward the exact same video and he knows what's going to happen!"

Keef got into unboxing videos a few years ago, when he offset moved to Los Angeles from Alabama to pursue an acting career.

Simply he found L.A. overwhelming and isolating. Later on a while, he started going online and watching YouTube toy videos as a mental escape. He continued with an online and offline community of "self-proclaimed geeks and nerds and collectors."

"I was like, 'You exist?'" said Keef, who as a child had a room dedicated to Ghostbuster activity figures, Cabbage Patch dolls and My Fiddling Ponies. "This is so absurd. They were toy collectors, they would do Comic-Con, they collected comic books."

Keef uploaded his first video in January 2014. After a year of making at least three videos a calendar week, the Family unit Video Network, a collection of YouTube channels started by the family behind the "Mommy and Gracie Testify," invited him to join — which gave Keef admission to toy makers who send him toys for review.

This month, he quit ane of his ii jobs as a massage therapist to devote more time to creating videos. And so far, he earns only about $300 a calendar month from ads that run before his videos, but he hopes to bolster his views plenty so that he can showtime pulling in at least $1,000 a month next year. How much YouTubers earn depends on the number of views, how long people watch the ads and whether viewers click through to the actual products.

"Information technology's non big coin for me right at present," Keef said. "But I want to turn this hobby into a job, and that's what I'm pushing toward."

He can afford to pursue his dream, at to the lowest degree for now. His friend rents out his spare chamber to him for just $700 a month. The small space looks similar it's directly out of Santa'southward workshop. In one corner, a trio of American Girl dolls surround a Christmas tree. On the headboard, James Dean dolls and Barbies in elaborate ball gowns are stacked on top of one another in their original boxes.

Producing the kind of content that will propel a toy unboxer to YouTube stardom is hard work.

One of the nigh successful, Sandra Wells of DisneyCarToys, said she worked twenty-hour days for the first two years. At present her channel has 3.1 million subscribers and her husband runs his own toy channel.

Wells declined to give specifics, but she said her family makes enough money off YouTube ads for her to consider it "a total-time chore" (information technology also at least matches her quondam salary as a fiscal analyst, she says).

The almost successful unboxers have a unique style that attracts kids and stands out from the contest, said Jim Silver, editor in chief of toy review site TTPM.

"Some are all easily, only the vocalization and easily," Silver said. "Others are almost like watching a TV show."

Toy makers are too increasingly collaborating with YouTubers offline.

Moose Toys, an Australian company with an office in El Segundo, paid Wells to fly to New York City in August for a meet-and-greet with fans in the Toys R Us store in Times Foursquare.

YouTube has been "a big part of the success" of Shopkins, the visitor's line of collectible plastic toys that take the shape of objects similar popcorn and toasters, said Paul Solomon, Moose's co-chief executive. The popularity of online videos in which dolls such as Barbies are paired with the collectibles actually inspired the visitor to launch its own Shopkins dolls.

"YouTube was something of a goad for Shopkins," he said. "It'due south where kids are creating their vacation lists."

As for Keef, he hopes one day to reach a level where toy companies seek him out. For now, he's happy feeding his steadily growing fan base with fresh videos.

He acknowledges that some people might consider information technology weird that an adult would devote and so much time to playing with toys intended for kids.

"In my caput that does sound strange," Keef said. But "I tin take my ain world for myself on YouTube, and I am sharing that with a ton of other people."

shan.li@latimes.com

Twitter: @ByShanLi

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Source: https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-toy-unboxing-boom-20151224-story.html

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